Effective software trace is a valuable technique used to identify defects in a computer system. An example of where software trace is particularly useful is with computer appliances. A computer appliance is a discrete hardware device that is designed to provide specific computing tasks. Computer appliances include integrated firmware configured to perform the specified tasks. For example, the DataPower and PureApplication line of appliances from the International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) provide customers with security, control, integration, and access for a variety of workloads and services. Generally, hardware and software components of a computer appliance are configured before being delivered to a customer. Further, appliances generally do not allow the customer to reconfigure the hardware or software components. Because a computer appliance is typically a closed system, developers often configure the appliance to perform verbose tracing. Doing so allows the appliance to capture information that the developers need to identify defects or other performance issues.